Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences
ISSN 2039-2117 (online)
ISSN 2039-9340 (print)
MCSER Publishing, Rome-Italy
Vol 6 No 4 S2
July 2015
George Bernard Shaw's John Bull's Other Island and Homi K. Bhabha:
The Colonizer and the Other in the Third Space
Samira Sasani
Assistant Prof. of English Literature, Shiraz University
samira.sasani21@yahoo.com
Doi:10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n4s2p324
Abstract
This article aims at a reevaluation of colonial readings of George Bernard Shaw's John Bull's Other Island with regard to its
power relationships between the colonizer and the colonized (the Other) and hopes to disavow the traditionally straightforward
analysis of the power relations in which the colonizer is considered as the absolute power. This play shows how "colonial
mimicry strategy", proposed by Homi K. Bhabha, functions in the hands of both the colonizer and the colonized, through which
they mutually exert power and project their desires and fears onto each other and how the identities of the main English figure,
Broadbent, and the main Irishmen, Larry and Keegan, are formed in the presence of the Other, by too perfectly or imperfectly
(two resistance strategies proposed by Bhabha) imitating the Other.
Keywords: George Bernard Shaw; Homi K. Bhabha, colonial mimicry strategy; the Third Space
1. Introduction
The literary critics and Shaw's scholars studying George Bernard Shaw's John Bull's Other Island from colonial point of
view have applied the straightforward approach to the relationship between the colonizer, Broadbent, and his colonized,
the Irish people and none has scrutinized this text from Homi K. Bhabha's point of view in which the identities of the
colonizer and the Other are mutually constructed and none has priority over the other in the Third Space Bhabha
proposes. The significance of Homi K. Bhabha's post-colonial theories lies in its practicality. What Bhabha proposes
practically occurs to the colonizers whom Edward Said has stereotypically portrayed as the absolute power. Huddart
claims: "when the relationship between self and other seems to be one of domination, the fact that there is a relationship
at all suggest that domination is not total." (2006, p.46) Unlike Said, Bhabha argues that the colonizer is intimidated by
the colonized or the colonized has power over the colonizer; in other words the relation between these two parties is
mutual and each is dependent on the other. Even their identities are mutually constructed. Thus, the analysis of John
Bull's Other Island from Bhabha's point of view is not only a new and unprecedented research but it also reinforces
Bhabha's theory highlighting the anxiety of the colonizer and the agency of the colonized which can be considered as the
objective of the study.
2. Theoretical Framework
Homi K. Bhabha in his influential book, The Location of Culture, emphasizes the mutual power relationship between the
colonizer and the colonized. In his view, the power scheme is not a straightforward exertion of power from top to bottom,
from the colonizer to the colonized. He deconstructs the binary oppositions, the rigid distinctions between the colonizer
and the colonized, the black and white or superior and inferior. In other words, he deconstructs Edwards Said's traditional
notion towards the colonizer's straightforward treatment of the colonized as the Other, or the inferior.
Bhabha argues that the colonizer tries to internalize inferiority in the colonized and imposes "mimicry strategy"—he
also calls it "sly civility"—onto it; while the colonizer, at the same time, is afraid of the reformed colonized. Bhabha
highlights the anxiety of the colonizer and the agency of the colonized. The colonizer wants the colonized almost the
same but not quite, Bhabha claims. Bhabha believes that "mimicry is at once resemblance and menace." (1994, p.123)
Since becoming quite the same means that the colonizer's authentic identity is paradoxically imitable. Thus, the colonizer
is troubled by the Other, the colonized or the colonizer's double.
On the other hand, the colonized exerts power on the colonizer and intimidates it. The colonized resists the
colonizer with different resistance strategies. Ball maintains that Bhabha's ideas "show how colonial power relations
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inevitably generate resistance and inhibiting ambivalence as by-products of their discursive and administrative structures
of control." (2003, p.37) The colonized deliberately would not imitate the colonizer perfectly or imitates the colonizer too
perfectly that it looks fake and artificial. The resistance strategies, as Huddart argues, mean that "mimicry is repetition
with difference, and so it is not evidence of the colonized's servitude." (2006, p.39) Huddart argues: "Bhabha's close
textual analysis finds the hidden gaps and anxieties present in the colonial situation. These points of textual anxiety mark
moments in which the colonizer was less powerful than was apparent, moments when the colonized were able to resist
the dominance exercised over them. In short, Bhabha's work emphasizes the active agency of the colonized." (original
italics 2006, p.1)
The colonizer tries to make the colonized aware of its difference from the colonized. However, the benefit of this
awareness is twofold; both the colonizer and the colonized understand themselves with the help of "Otherness". Iser
stipulates: "Otherness turns into a mirror for self-observation, and such a relationship sets the process of selfunderstanding in motion, because the alien that is to be grasped realizes itself to the extent to which one’s own
dispositions come under scrutiny. The knowledge thus obtained is twofold: by getting to know what is different, one
begins to know oneself." (2007, p.36)
Habib also notes that Hegel believes difference to be indispensable to the notion of identity (2008, p.387). Hegel
believes that, “identity has its nature beyond itself, in difference . . . . identity and difference are inseparable.” (Habib
2008, p.388) Based on Homi K. Bhabah's theory, the identities of the colonizer and the colonized are formed in the Third
Space. Bhabha perceives it as: "the encounter of two social groups with different cultural traditions and potentials of
power as a special kind of negotiation or translation," which "takes place in a Third Space of enunciation." (Ikas and
Wagner 2009, p.2) Based on "The Third Space" theory of Bhabha, "minority groups in the metropoles—marginals within
the center—adumbrate a third rhetorical space that disrupts and destabilizes centralized authority." (Huggan 2001, p.21)
3. Post-colonial Reading of John Bull's Other Island
John Bull's Other Island is turning round three main characters, two Irish men, Laurence Doyle and Keegan, and an
English man, Thomas Broadbent. In this play the colonized and the colonizer are interacting somehow equally and there
is no up-to-down gaze from the colonizer to the colonized; in other words, the colonizer and the colonized are interacting
in the Third Space proposed by Homi. K. Bhabha. Not only the colonizer exerts power on the colonized but also the
colonized intimidates the colonizer with its power. It is not only the colonizer who projects its desires and fears onto the
Other, but also the Other does the same. Thus the power relation is not straightforward but complex and mutual. The
Other, in John Bull's Other Island, is revealed in two forms of the colonized and the colonizer. In the first part of the play,
Laurance Doyle (Larry, the Irish man), is depicted as the Other who is living in England and in the second part of the play,
Broadbent is the Other in Roscullen. The play ironically depicts the complex relationship between the colonizer and the
colonized.
The play starts while Broadbent and Hodson, his valet, are talking about going to Ireland. The very first
stereotypical saying about Irish people, the Others, is stated by the English man, Broadbent, who is expecting to see Tim
Haffigan, the Irish man. Broadbent tells Hodson to let Haffigan who "is an Irishman, and not very particular about his
appearance" in (Shaw 1964, p.73). England, for Larry and Haffigan, is a land of liberty and independence. They want to
be like the English people and to imitate them. On the other hand, Broadbent, the colonizer, valorizes Ireland; entering
the Third Space, he tries to become like them; otherwise the Irishmen would be a threat to him and his colonizing
purposes.
Intimidating by the colonized's resistance strategy, Broadbent sees no other way than assimilating himself with the
Irishmen—entering the Third Space—to be accepted by them and consequently to be allowed to rule them. However, as
Homi K. Bhabha maintains, Broadbent, as the Other, becomes almost the same but not quite. In addition, the Irishmen
following the "colonial mimicry strategy," also, become almost the same as the English men but not quite the same. As
Bhabha theorizes, the "colonial mimicry strategy" is advocated by both parties, the colonizer and the colonized or
generally speaking, by the colonizer and the Other, since both parties disavow being quite the same. Colonial mimicry
strategy desires: "a reformed recognizable Other, as a subject of difference that is almost the same, but not quite."
(original italics, Huddart 2006, p.40)
As Bhabha proposes, the Other's unwillingness to be quite the same as the colonizer roots in its resistance
strategy and the colonizer's reluctance settles in its intimidation of creating a double which tacitly encourages the idea of
the colonizer's imitable identity which suggests that the colonizer's identity is not authentic and original. Consequently,
Larry is almost the same as the English but he is not quite the same. Likewise, Broadbent imitates the Irish people and
becomes almost the same as the Irish men but he does not become quite the same; or more accurately they—Larry and
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Broadbent—do not let him to become quite the same. However, in this play, Broadben't reluctance settles in his
resistance strategy, since he is not just the colonizer but he is the Other when he goes to Ireland. Therefore, the complex
power relation, Bhabha proposes, becomes much more complex, since the Other is transformed throughout Shaw's play.
In Bhabha's view, the relation between the colonized and the colonizer is mutual and complex but here, George Bernard
Shaw's satirical depiction of this colonial relationship and the way Shaw transforms the Other, makes the power
relationship much more complex.
Entering the Third Space, Broadbent tries to get close to the Irishmen's point of view and looks at the world from
their equal stance. Ostensibly he is worried about Ireland and wants to improve the land. He tells Tim Haffigan:
I am an Englishman and a Liberal; and now that South Africa has been enslaved and destroyed, there is no
country left to me to take an interest in but Ireland. Mind: I dont say that an Englishman has not other duties. He has a
duty to Finland and a duty to Macedonia. But what sane man can deny that an Englishman's first duty is his duty to
Ireland? Unfortunately, we have politicians here more unscrupulous than Bobrikoff, more bloodthirsty than Abdul the
Damned; and it is under their heel that Ireland is now writhing. (Shaw 1964, p.75)
Broadbent claims that he wants to develop an estate there for the Land Development Syndicate, but he wants to
handle it as "estates are handled in England" (76). Thus, though he tries to assimilate himself with the Irishmen and
becomes the same, he does not want to be quite the same; he has his own English methods. In other words, he resists
becoming quite the same as the Irish people. "The inconsistency between Broadbent's behavior and his professed
motives means that he is a hypocrite of sorts," McDowell maintains (1967, p.547). For Haffigan, who is Irish, Broadbent
is the Other who wants to exploit Ireland:
Broadbent: . . . You know the English plan, Mr. Haffigan, dont you?
Tim: Bedad I do, sir. Take all you can out of Ireland and spend it in England: thats it.
Broadbent [not quite liking this]: My plan, sir, will be to take a little money out of England and spend it in Ireland. (Shaw
1964, p.76)
Broadbent, the colonizer, knows that when he goes to Ireland, he is treated as the Other. He tells Haffigan: "when I
first arrive in Ireland I shall be hated as an Englishman. As a Protestant, I shall be denounced from every altar. My life
may be in danger. Well, I am prepared to face that." (Shaw 1964, p.76) Haffigan, as Shaw ironically depicts, is both the
colonizer and the Other, while the Irish people are treated as the Other in England and treat the English peopel as the
Other in Ireland. Consequently the colonial relationship Bernard Shaw depicts, many years ago in the nineteenth century,
is totally different from the traditionally straightforward depiction of the colonized-colonizer relations. What Shaw has
satirically depicted is very much like the mutual relationship Homi K. Bhabha suggests for the colonized and the
colonizer, many years later. Satire, Rabb agues: “examine [s] national, historical, or ethnic identity. . . . [it] bring[s] objects
of fear or danger into our midst by blurring the distinction between the broom and the dirt it sweeps, between us and
them, or self and other.” (2007, p.582) And this is what Shaw has beautifully portrayed.
What is common between the Irish men and the English men is that both can see themselves in the eyes of the
Other. In other words, their identities are formed in the presence of the Other and if there is no difference, there would be
no identity. Surely in presence of the Other—the difference—identity is shaped. Thus, it is because of the presence of the
Other, Broadbent (the English man), that the Irish people can understand themselves and their identities; likewise
Broadbent's identity is shaped by the presence of the Other, the Irish men. Huddart articulates: "colonialism is marked by
a complex economy of identity in which colonized and colonizer depend on each other." (2006, p.2) The Other is not
something outside or beyond the self, as the traditional Cartesian perspective would have it; rather, it is deeply implicated
in and with the self (Türkkan 2011, p.369). Put differently, the colonized is shaped by and also shapes the colonizer; it is
gazed at and gazes at the colonizer and that is the mutual complex relationship between the colonizer and the Other
which Bhabha suggests. Broadbent sees Haffigan differently; he tells Tim Haffigan:
Broadbent: . . . I saw at once that you are a thorough Irishman, with all the faults and all the qualities of your race: rash
and improvident but brave and good-natured; not likely to succeed in business on your own account perhaps, but
eloquent, humorous, a lover of freedom, and a true follower of that great Englishman Gladstone.
Tim: . . . I mustn’t sit here to be praised to me face. But I confess to the goodnature: it's an Irish wakeness. I'd share me
last shillin with a friend. (Shaw 1964, p.77)
Tim Haffigan is seen from the colonizer's point of view as the Other, the Irishman with Irish characteristics. On the
other hand, Broadbent wants to project his own desires and fears onto the Other, Tim Haffigan. Broadbent wants to make
him almost similar to the English man, though not quite the same. He calls him a true follower of Gladstone, the
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Englishman. Tim is just a tool in Broadbent's hands. Broadbent tells Larry: "he's [Tim Haffigan] evidently the very man to
take with me to Ireland to break the ice for me. He can gain the confidence of the people there, and make them friendly to
me." (Shaw 1964, p.80)
Broadbent mistakenly takes Haffigan as an Irish man. He is actually deceived by a Scotch, Haffigan. Haffigan
imitates Irish behavior and deceives the English man. Bernard Shaw's comic approach to colonial discourse is explicitly
revealed in Broadbent and Haffigan's relationship. Following his colonial mimicry strategy, Broadbent—the colonizer and
the Other—tries to become like the Irish people to colonize them and exploit them while he is unknowingly deceived by
the same strategy exerted on him by a Scotch fellow who pretends to be Irish and takes money from Broadbent. This part
of the play overtly highlights Huddart's saying about Bhabha's theory of mimicry strategy. Huddart maintains that "this
mimicry is also a form of mockery, and Bhabha's post-colonial theory is a comic approach to colonial discourse." (2006,
p.39) Broadbent fooled by Haffigan, unbelievably declares: "but he spoke—he behaved just like an Irishman." (Shaw
1964, p.81) Larry Doyle in response to Broadbent very well explains the comic mimicry mechanism, or better to say a
comic mimicry business, as Larry calls it:
Doyle: Like an Irishman!! Man alive, dont you know that all this top-o-the-morning and broth-of-a-boy and more-powerto-your-elbow business is got up in England to fool you, like the Albert Hall concerts of Irish music? No Irishman ever
talks like that in Ireland, or ever did, or ever will. But when a thoroughly worthless Irishman comes to England, and finds
the whole place full of romantic duffers like you, who will let him loaf and drink and sponge and brag as long as he
flatters your sense of moral superiority by playing the fool and degrading himself and his country, he soon learns the
antics that take you in. (my italics, Shaw 1964, p.81)
Larry, the Irishman, ostensibly pretends that he does not like Ireland and does not want to go back to Ireland with
Broadbent. But at times, with some words and actions, he is disturbed and defends Ireland. Very much like Broadbent,
Larry, as the Other, employs the colonial mimicry strategy and tries to be almost the same as the English but as Homi K.
Bhabha believes, he cannot become quite the same which is rooted in his resistance to servitude. Actually based on
Bhabha's theory, the Other resists in two ways while imitating the colonizer: it may imperfectly imitate the colonizer or it
may too perfectly imitate that it seems ridiculous. The latter resistance strategy is what Larry does, especially in the first
act of the play.
As Bhabha argues, in The Location of Culture, "the discourse of mimicry is constructed around an ambivalence; in
order to be effective, mimicry must continually produce its slippage, its excess, its difference" (1994, p.122). Larry goes
to extreme and becomes too much English and that is unbelievable for the English man, Broadbent. Seeing Larry's too
much resistance not to go back to Ireland and seeing his dissatisfaction of the way the Irish people behave and his too
much Englishness, Broadbent warns him that he cannot believe him.
Larry is concealing his Irishness under the veneer of being amusing and agreeable to strangers; however his
exaggerated English behavior is an emblem of his resistance to servitude as the Other. Larry with his too much
Englishness, on one hand, and on the other hand, by his paradoxically verbal defense of Ireland, at some pivotal
moments, plays his role as the ambivalent Other. While Larry is paradoxically condemning the Irish for being too
imaginative and condemning himself for his Irish conduct of nagging and being dissatisfied and never quite, Broadbent
denies his sayings and reminds him that he is very amusing and agreeable to strangers. This saying outrages Larry who
does not want to be quite the same and quite agreeable.
Larry's reaction rises from his resistance strategy, as the Other. He contends: "yes, to strangers. Perhaps if I was
a bit stiffer to strangers, and a bit easier at home, like an Englishman, I'd be better company for you." (Shaw 1964, p.83)
Broadbent assures him: "we get on well enough," but then he refers to the difference and reminds Larry that he is
different and from another race: "of course you have the melancholy of the Keltic race . . . and also its habit of using
strong language when theres nothing the matter." (Shaw 1964, p.83) Larry who resists being quite the same as the
English men, rejects Broadbent's saying which highlights Larry's difference: "Nothing the matter! When people talk about
the Celtic race, I feel as if I could burn down London. That sort of rot does more harm than ten Coercion Acts. Do you
suppose a man need be a Celt to feel melancholy in Russcullen? Why, man, Ireland was peopled just as England was;
and its breed was crossed by just the same invaders." (Shaw 1964, p.83)
Having defended Ireland, Larry paradoxically condemns the imaginative people of Ireland and derisively condemns
his mimicry and his attempt of assimilation. He denounces imagination as the source of all shortcomings and difficulties of
Irish people and also their inferiority: "An Irishman's imagination never lets him alone, never convinces him, never
satisfies him; but it makes him that he cant face reality nor deal with it nor handle it nor conquer it: he can only sneer at
them that do, and [bitterly, at Broadbent] be 'agreeable to strangers,' like good-for-nothing woman on the streets."(Shaw
1964, pp.84-85)
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Larry condemns the Irish people's sense of humor and considers humor and imagination as their shortcomings or
the cause of their inferiority. On the other hand, Broadbent takes the previous role of Larry and defends Ireland.
Broadbent, as the colonizer, employs the colonial mimicry strategy and ensures Larry that there would be great
possibilities for Ireland if the Irish people follow the English guidance and imitate the English policy to govern their
country: "We English must place our capacity for government without stint at the service of nations who are less
fortunately endowed in that respect; so as to allow them to develop in perfect freedom to the English level of selfgovernment." (Shaw 1964, p.86)
Broadbent wants to make Ireland almost the same as England with his mimicry strategy. When he tries to
persuade Larry to go back to Ireland, he tells Larry that Larry is the same as the English people now and thus his family
will be delighted to see him: "now that England has made a man of you." (Shaw 1964, p.86) Broadbent wants Larry
almost the same but not quite as he later on repeatedly insists that Larry is an Irishman and the things such as South
Africa, Free Trade, and Home Rule are not serious to him as an Irishman as they are to an Englishman. As Bhabha
maintains: "colonial discourse wants the colonized to be extremely like the colonizer, but by no means identical." (Huddart
2006, p.40) Huddart well represents this ambivalent situation: "the play between equivalence and excess makes the
colonized both reassuringly similar and also terrifying." (2006, p.41) And that's why the colonizer does not desire to make
the colonized quite the same.
Being in the Third Space, Larry, as the Other, gazes at Broadbent, the colonizer, and criticizes him. In Huddart's
sense, "the colonized returns the colonizer's gaze." (2006, p.45) Larry, the Other, intimidates Broadbent since Larry is
becoming the same as the colonizer or as Broadbent states, England has been making a man of him. Larry, who is
gaining power, criticizes the way the English people, as the Others in his view, shrewdly behave when they go to Ireland
and also criticizes the camouflage strategy they use to exploit Ireland. Bhabha employs Lacan's psychoanalytic concept,
"camouflage" referring to "blending in with something in the background that none the less is not entirely there itself,"
(Huddart 2006, p.46) which is very telling of the English man's condition in Ireland. Larry metaphorically calls the
Englishman, the caterpillar: "the world is full of fools as a tree is full of leaves. Well, the Englishman does what the
caterpillar does. He instinctively makes himself look like a fool, and eats up all the real fools at his ease while his enemies
let him alone and laugh at him for being a fool like the rest." (Shaw 1964, p.90)
In the second act of the play, Broadbent, and Hodson, go to Ireland. From now on the roles of these characters are
changed. Broadbent and Hodson are considered as the Other by Irish people. The presence of these English people
provides a good opportunity for the Irish people to know themselves better. Father Keegan very nicely portrays this very
concept of the importance of the presence of the Other for the formation of the identity. At the beginning of the second
act, Miss Nora Reilly asks Keegan whether he found Ireland very small and backward when he came back to it from his
distant journeys, such as his journeys to Oxford, Rome and other great cities. This conversation at the beginning of the
second act is truly suitable for this act in which difference makes identity. Keegan very beautifully stipulates: "When I
went to those great cities I saw wonders I had never seen in Ireland. But when I came back to Ireland I found all the
wonders there waiting for me. You see they had been there all the time; but my eyes had never been opened to them. I
did not know what my own house was like, because I had never been outside it." (Shaw 1964, p.101) With the presence
of the Englishmen in Ireland, the Irishmen and the Englishmen can understand their identities better because identity is
meaningful in the presence of difference; otherwise there would be no identity.
In the third act of the play, Larry comes to Ireland and joins the Englishmen. Hodson explicitly announces his
hatred of the Irish people; he cannot tolerate them. Though, he is the Other in Ireland, and is the valet, he sees the Irish
as the Other. Larry, who is in his homeland, treats Broadbent as the Other and also the colonizer; perceiving Broadbent
as the colonizer, Larry rebukes Broadbent for his intimidating colonial ideas leading to the exploitation of Ireland: "thats
an Englishman all over! make bad laws and give away all the land, and then, when your economic incompetence
produces its natural and inevitable results, get virtuously indignant and kill the people that carry out your laws." (Shaw
1964, p.120) Broadbent, as the Other, ties to assimilate himself with the Irishmen and become almost the same and at
the same time, he, as the colonizer, does not want to become quite the same as a sign of his resistance to servitude.
Entering the Third Space, Broadbent, as the Other, appreciates Ireland and the Irish people. He appreciates Nora's
Irish appearance: "a type rare in England, except perhaps in the best of the aristocracy." (Shaw 1964, p.122) As a
colonizer, he projects all his fears and desires onto the Irishmen whom he considers as the Other. He desires to marry
Nora, Larry's formerly fiancée, to reach his desires. He is paradoxically the Other and the colonizer in Ireland. His status
is very much like the status Bhabha portrays for all the colonizers; in Bhabha's view, they are not the absolute power but
they are intimidated by the Other's power; that's why the colonizers desire a reformed recognizable Other and not the
Other who is quite the same.
Cornelius, Larry's father, along with some other Irish men suggest Larry become one of the members of the
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Parliament. In contrast to Larry's reluctance, Tom Broadbent is very much interested and some of the Irish people, such
as Mathew Haffigan and Larry himself, take Broadbent's side. Father Dempsey and Mathew Haffigan do not believe in
the modern Irishman, Larry; Mathew calls Larry a turncoat. Unlike Larry, Broadbent's endeavors for assimilation blossom
and he is almost accepted by the Irish people. Broadbent's mottoes of Reformation and Union have been very influential
and also very telling of his colonial mimicry strategy a colonizer employs to rule the colonized. Broadbent's Reformation
policy of reducing the burden of the rates and taxes very well portrays the colonizer's colonial strategy of keeping the
colonized at the level of the reformed but recognizable Other.
Very much like Larry, the Other, who has gone to extreme by too perfectly imitating the English people—which is
surely a type of resistance, as Bhabha proposes—Broadbent too enthusiastically advocates Home Rule, even much
more than the Irishmen, themselves, which is surely the emblem of his resistance to servitude, to be quite the same as
the Irishmen. In response to Cornelius who asks Broadben's opinion about Home Rule, Broadbent, as the stage direction
says, rises "so as to address them more imposingly": "I really cannot tell you what I feel about Home Rule without using
the language of hyperbole." (Shaw 1964, p.133) Broadbent confesses that his too much enthusiasm and anxiety for the
Irish people's future is a trick. He, hugely self-satisfied, addresses Larry: "I think Ive done the trick this time. I just gave
them a bit of straight talk; and it went home. They were greatly impressed: everyone of those men believe in me and will
vote for me when the question of selecting a candidate comes up. After all, whatever you say, Larry, they like an
Englishman. They feel they can trust him, I suppose." (Shaw 1964, p.135)
Unlike Broadbent, Hodson, his valet, expresses his abhorrence very explicitly and unwisely. He cannot tolerate the
Irish people and for him, they are the Others. He is ignorant of this fact that he is the Other in their land and that he
should employ the colonial strategy his master employs. In contrast with Hodson, Broadbent does not show his hatred
overtly. His resistance is operating under the veneer of two types of resistance strategy: by too perfectly imitating the Irish
people and devoting his life to the cause of Ireland or by his imperfect imitation. The latter strategy is revealed when he
shrewdly addresses Mathew as a "yeomanry" while he pretends that he is not familiar with its Irish connotations; however
Larry admonishes him that in Rosscullen a yeoman means a sort of Orange Bashi-Bazouk . Larry mitigates Mathew's
anger, informing him that in England they call a freehold farmer a yeoman. Therefore, as the Other in Ireland, Broadbent
tries to be almost the same and penetrate in Irish people's hearts but not quite the same.
The forth act of the play starts with the talks about the humorous news of the Haffigan's pig and Broadbent's
accident. Broadbent is not still accepted by the Irish people as quite the same. This is the very characteristic of "colonial
mimicry strategy"; not only the colonizer but also the colonized or the Other, does not desire to become completely the
same. The Irish people still consider Broadbent as the Other and derides him for the funny thing he does. But Broadbent
wisely turns the story to another direction—not to get far from them—and declares that he is happy that it has happened
since: "it has brought out the kindness and sympathy of the Irish character." (Shaw 1964, p.146) He also tells them that "if
it were legally possible I should become a naturalized Irishman." (Shaw 1964, p.147) Nora is deceived by his flattery but
Cornelius and Larry know that Broadbent is deceiving them. Cornelius assumes that Broadbent is mocking the Irishmen
and Larry, who has always been aware that Broadbent can never become quite the same as the Irishmen, believes that
Broadbent, as the Other, does not understand the meaning of the Irish people's derisions but he is wise enough to take
the seat of the Parliament while the town is teasing him:
Cornelius: It's all up with his candidature. He'll be laughed out o the town.
Larry: Oh no he wont: he's not an Irishman. He'll never know theyre laughing at him; and while theyre laughing he'll win
the seat. (Shaw 1964, p.148)
Very much like Cornelius and Larry, Father Keegan—seeing Braodbent's deceitful attitude towards the Irish
people—wisely calls him the hypocrite: "Sir: there was a time, in my ignorant youth, when I should have called you a
hypocrite." (Shaw 1964, p.149) Keegan goes further and reveals the identity of the Other, Broadbent, to him. Though
Broadbent becomes angry and temporarily loses his confidence, he finds the opportunity of seeing himself differently,
from the Other's point of view or generally from a different point of view. Keegan, who is the Other for Broadbent, depicts
Broadbent's English identity, as such: "Do not be offended, sir: I know that you are quite sincere. There is a saying in the
Scripture which runs—so far as the memory of an oldish man can carry the words—Let not the right side of your brain
know what the left side doeth. I learnt at Oxford that this is the secret of the Englishman's strange power of making the
best of both worlds." (Shaw 1964, p.150)
What Keegan tells Broadbent metaphorically refers to the way the Englishman "makes the best of both worlds,"
both the colonizer's world and the Other's. Broadbent well portrays Bhabha's colonizer. He is not the absolute power,
when he is the colonizer and not the intimidated, weak, and overwhelmed character when he is the Other. On the other
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hand, Larry and Keegan, the Irishmen, are not in servitude of the colonizer and when in Ireland, they are not completely
in power, as Bhabha proposes. Thus, the colonizer is shaped by and shapes the Other.
The Irish identity and the English identity are revealed when each is studied at the presence of the other. Culler
believes: “even the idea of personal identity emerges through the discourse of a culture: the “I” is not something given but
comes to exist as that which is addressed by and related to others.” (qtd. in Ashcroft et al. 2007, p.206) In the presence of
the Other, whether the Englishman as the Other or the Irishman, these two identities become meaningful and
distinguishable. "In Derrida’s words, what we take to be meaning is really only the mental trace left behind by the play of
signifiers. And that trace consists of the differences by which we define a word." (qtd in Tyson 2006, p. 253) For Father
Keegan, the Irishman, this world is a place of torment and penance; while for Broadbent, the Englishman, the world is
quite good and rather a jolly place. From a political point of view, Broadbent is satisfied with this world and sees no evils
in the world, "except, of course, natural evils that cannot be remedied by freedom, self-government, and English
institutions." (Shaw 1964, p. 152) Broadbent feels quite at home in the world while for Keegan it is not so.
Keegan thanks Broadbent, the Other, for making him think about his own world and his identity: "you have set me
thinking. Thank you." (Shaw 1964, p.153) He thanks Broadbent for making him look at his own identity from another point
of view, very much like the time when Keegan comments on the Irish and English features and thus makes Broadbent
able to see the differences and to understand his own identity deeper through the eyes of the Other. Consequently,
Broadbent believes that articulating his own English ideas stimulates Keegan to think about his own Irish identity: "you
find that contact with English ideas is stimulating." (Shaw 1964, p.153) Fanon also asserts that:
Man is human only to the extent to which he tries to impose his existence on another man in order to be
recognized by him. As long as he has not been effectively recognized by the other, that other will remain the theme of his
actions. It is on that other being, on recognition by that other being, that his own human worth and reality depend. It is
that other being in whom the meaning of his life is condensed. (2008, pp.168-169)
In Homi K. Bhabha's postcolonial theory the colonial stereotypes, stated in Edward Said's Orientalism, are
deconstructed. In the mutual and complex colonizer-colonized relationships proposed by Bhabah, the Other has the
opportunity to gaze at the colonizer from the Third Space and consequently the stereotypes formerly describing the
colonizers as the source of power are deconstructed. Very much like the Other, the colonizer has the opportunity to look
at the colonized or the Other from the equal point of view from the Third Space, thus the formerly traditional stereotypes
are deconstructed through the eyes of the colonizer standing at the almost equal level with the Other.
When these different people confront one another, the way they interpret one another's identity deconstructs the
formerly traditional stereotypes about the English and the Irish in which the Irish were considered as the people with the
strong sense of humor or the English as very serious people with no feelings. Ajtony argues that "on the one hand, the
English Broadbent's verbal behavior reveals an Irish identity in so far as his utterances lack humor and irony . . . . On the
other hand, on surface level Larry Doyle's utterances reveal a fake English stereotype." (2010, p.257) Broadbent also
believes that life is too earthly for Larry, the Irishman. Near the end of the play, when Broadbent once again proposes
marriage to Nora and cannot recognize her delicately tacit positive response, he reveals to her, her serious Irish identity
as Nora also reveals to him his emotional English identity:
Broadbent: . . . You think I have no feeling because I am a plain unemotional Englishman, with no powers of
expression.
Nora: I dont think you know the sort of man you are at all. Whatever may be the matter with you, it's not want of feeling.
Broadbent [hurt and petulant]: It's you who have no feeling. Youre as heartless as Larry. (Shaw 1964, p.161)
Broadbent, as the colonizer, becomes successful to take Nora from Larry. He not only takes Nora from Larry, but
he also takes the seat of Parliament from him. Broadbent is not the absolute power and thus cannot get Ireland from the
Irish people without assimilation; in other words, he should pay for it. Huddart maintains that, "colonial authority is
menaced by the colonized to the extent that it utterly depends on the colonized for its sense of itself." (2006, p.61)
Intimidated by the Irishmen, Broadbent, as the Other, has no other choice than assimilating himself to the codes and
norms of Ireland to find way among Irishmen and to be almost accepted by them to get ready for his last stroke which is
the exploitation of Ireland. He tells Nora: "I get engaged to the most delightful woman in Ireland; and it turns out that I
couldnt have done a smarter stroke of electioneering." (Shaw 1964, p.165) Larry also acknowledges that he loses Nora
because he is Irish and Broadbent can take her from him since he is English: "Nora, dear, dont you understand that I'm
an Irishman, and he's an Englishman. He wants you; and he grabs you. I want you; and I quarrel with you and have to go
on wanting you." (original italics, Shaw 1964, p.166)
Keegan, at the end of the play, objects to Broadbent's deceitful colonial mimicry strategy which leads to his unjust
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success of grabbing the lands and exploiting Ireland; though for Broadbent it is a reasonable success of the efficient man
over the inefficient, apart from the political issues of being English or Irish. As a colonizer, he ensures Larry and Keegan
that he will try to improve Ireland, to bring money there and to raise wages and to make it like England. Keegan, looking
at this matter from the Third Space, derides Broadbent for thinking about making a very modern prison out of Ireland by
projecting his desires onto it. Looking at Broadbent and his desires for Ireland from the Third Space, Keegan calls
Broadbent an ass: "the ass, sir, is the most efficient of beasts, matter-of-fact, hardy, friendly when you treat him as a
fellow-creature, stubborn when you abuse him, ridiculous only in love, which sets him braying, and in politics, which move
him to roll about in the public road and raises a dust about nothing." (Shaw 1964, p.172)
Keegan resists Broadbent's colonial mimicry strategy. He does not want to become quite like English people.
Broadbent, as the colonizer, wants to make Ireland very much like England, but Keegan contends that Broadbent cannot
be successful to make England out of Ireland. Keegan believes that Ireland "produces two kinds of men in strange
perfection: saints and traitors," (Shaw 1964, p.172) though in these recent years it is more fitly called the island of the
traitors. However he assumes, "the day may come when these islands shall live by the quality of their men rather than by
the abundance of their minerals; and then we shall see." (Shaw 1964, p.173) Keegan resorts to his dreams when he sees
Ireland in its deplorable condition; however dream, for him is, "a prophecy: every jest is an earnest in the womb of Time."
(Shaw 1964, p.176) For Keegan, Ireland is completely different from England. In his dream it is "a country where the
State is the Church and the Church the people: three in one and one in three." (Shaw 1964, p.177)
4. Conclusion
Looking at Ireland and the Irish people from the Third Space, Keegan sees Ireland still potentially powerful and hopes
that one day it gains its lost authority. From that stance, he has the opportunity to gaze at the English people as well.
Comparing and contrasting the English people with Irish people, he becomes able to know his own identity and also the
identity of his own country much better than before. Actually it is because of these differences that he believes in his own
country's potential power more than before. On the other hand, for Broadbent, who is looking at Ireland and England from
the Third Space, Ireland is the land of opportunities but he is also intimidated by the Irish power. Therefore, he does not
want Ireland to be quite like England with quite the same power and authority. In other words not a quite liberal Ireland,
but almost liberal Ireland ruled in the hands of the English, who are, as Broadbent believes, more efficient. Wedeen
sarcastically states that in "colonial and modernization discourses people have to move up the evolutionary ladder and
become more 'civilized' before they can be free." (2013, p.869) And this is exactly the way Broadbent thinks about
Ireland.
When Broadbent looks at England from Third Space, England is not that much superior than Ireland. Broadbent
likes Ireland and the Irish people, their looks and their accent. Even he likes the stubbornness of Keegan: "if the Church
of England contained a few men like Mr. Keegan, I should certainly join it." (Shaw 1964, p.176) However, he does not
want to make Ireland quite the same since this action will be a threat for him: it puts the authenticity of his people's
identity into question and at the same time, he is consequently encountered by his colonial double who has quite the
same power. Thus, the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized or the Other is a mutual relationship in which
each is intimidated and also intimidates the other and also is shaped by and shapes the other.
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